By the time Sun Bing struggled to his feet, the man in black was gone, and if not for the searing pain in his chin and the back of his head, he’d have thought it had all been a dream. But there was also the stone that filled his mouth, which he removed with his fingers and immediately burst into tears. He looked down on the ground, and there, in the moonlight, he saw the remnants of his beard on the cobblestones, like clumps of water grass, still twitching sadly.
Just before nightfall, his son-in-law walked in buoyantly, tossed him a chunk of flatbread, and walked out, still buoyant. His daughter did not return until it was time to light the lamps. In the glow of red candlelight, she appeared to be wild with joy, not at all like a woman who had just killed someone, not even like a woman who had tried but failed to kill someone. She was acting like a woman who had just returned from a wedding banquet. Before he could open his mouth to say anything, she said sternly:
“Dieh, you could not have been more wrong if you had tried. Magistrate Qian is a scholar whose hands are as soft as cotton batting. How could someone like that be a masked thug? If you ask me, you let those whores of yours pour horse piss down your throat, and you went half blind and half mad. I can’t think of any other reason why you would say something so crazy. Think about it: if His Eminence wanted your beard removed, do you really think that he, a high official, would do it himself? Besides, if he wanted your beard gone, he could have made you do it yourself after the contest, couldn’t he? Why go to the trouble of pardoning you? Not only that, but with what you said about him, he could have had you killed on the spot or put you in the local lockup and left you there to die, like so many before you. But instead he challenged you to a contest. Dieh, you have already left your forties and entered your fifties, so you ought to act your age instead of whoring around and womanizing. The way I see it, the old man in the sky sent someone down to remove that beard of yours as a warning, and if you don’t wise up, the next time it will be your head.”
His daughter’s rapid-fire rebuke made Sun Bing break out in a sweat, and he gazed at her, feeling that something was amiss, however serious she might look. The absurdity of it all had him thinking that most of what she’d said sounded nothing like his daughter. She’d become a different person in the space of a single day.
“Meiniang,” he said with a sneer, “what magic has that Qian fellow performed on you?”
“Is that the sort of thing a father says to his daughter?” she replied angrily. “Magistrate Qian is an upright gentleman who would not look cross-eyed at me.” She took a silver ingot out of her pocket and tossed it onto the bed. “He said about you, ‘He’s a damned actor acting like a turtle awaiting an Imperial Edict.’ No proper man acts like that. He is giving you fifty taels of silver to disband the opera troupe and go into business for yourself.”
Burning with indignation, Sun Bing was tempted to throw the silver back to show what a Northeast Gaomi Township man was made of. Instead, once he picked up the ingot, its cold heft made it impossible to let go.
“Daughter,” he said, “this ingot isn’t lead wrapped in tinfoil, is it?”
“What are you talking about, Dieh?” Meiniang’s anger was palpable. “Don’t think I don’t know how you treated Niang. The way you cheated, it’s no wonder she died an angry woman. Then you let our black donkey nearly bite me to death! For that alone I’ll hate you for the rest of my life. But I’m stuck with you. No matter how much I resent you, you’re still my dieh. If there’s only one person in the world who wishes you well, that person will be me. Please, Dieh, take Magistrate Qian’s advice and do what’s right. If you can find the right woman, marry her and live a peaceful life for as long as you have.” And so Sun Bing returned to Northeast Gaomi Township with the silver ingot, a trip characterized by nearly uncontrollable